


Maybe We'll Stop Running

by greygerbil



Category: Original Work
Genre: Biting, Kissing, M/M, Pregnancy, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:59:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25780984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/pseuds/greygerbil
Summary: Derrick's lover Limun is the last of his species, aside from their kid growing in his belly, and those who have hunted the rest of his people want to wipe Limun and the child off the face of the galaxy, too. Derrick is not about to let that happen.
Relationships: Male Human/Male Last Member of an Alien Species That Can Get Mpregnant By Any Species, Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 1
Kudos: 47
Collections: Battleship 2020, Battleship 2020 - Red Team





	Maybe We'll Stop Running

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gammarad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/gifts).



“Stop.”

Limun kept the assault rifle trained on Derrick’s head as Derrick slowly raised his hands, first to show that they were empty and then to take off the helmet of his armour. He breathed in the cold, damp air of the old underground tunnel, squinting into the light of the small neon lamp perched on the metal crate Limun had been using as both seat and desk.

“Just me,” he said.

Limun frowned, his eyes, all liquid silver, narrowing at him before he lowered the rifle. He strapped it to the holster at his hip before he stepped towards Derrick and kissed him.

His fingers were clawed and his skin harder and more durable than that of a human, leathery palms brushing roughly against Derrick’s dark shadow of stubble, but his lips were soft and his mouth warm. Derrick kissed him to taste him, unable to resist despite the urgency. Limun’s four arms wrapped around him and through the hard alloy of his armour and Limun’s bulletproof vest, Derrick could not feel the press of his round stomach against his own, but he traced it with his hand, running it up under where the vest sat awkwardly, let out to accommodate Limun’s belly. Ahambra children needed only four months to grow to full size – theirs would soon be ready to come into the world.

“Did you have visitors?” Derrick asked, parting.

“No, but lots of people stomping around overhead. I don’t think this is a safe spot anymore.”

“Well, good thing you’re not staying. Are you ready?”

Limun nodded his head, gesturing towards the depressingly small backpack that held all his belongings before he threw on the cape that hid the number of arms as well as the deep blue colour of his skin when the hood was pulled down far enough. Derrick waved at him to follow.

His lover was the last of his people but for the little one growing in his belly, who, despite Derrick’s human genes, would look like the spitting image of his other father. The Ahambra had that ability to make children who carried the DNA of both their parents, but were full Ahambra regardless. Biologically, they were – had been – the perfect species to prosper and multiply in an intergalactic society with hundreds of different aliens meeting; compatible with everyone, producing only their own. You needed a concentrated effort to rid the universe of that.

This effort has existed. The Ahambra had come out of their own star system already waging a war with the sentient people that had developed on the neighbouring planet, the Holeans, and eventually the Ahambra had lost, colony by colony, family by family, person by person. Then, one day, in that run-down dive at the entrance of Sextans main port, where mercenaries met to drink their pay away, Limun, then just a friend, had sat down next to Derrick at the bar, asked him about his latest job, and after the third drink had told him that to the best of his knowledge, after the orbital bombardment of the last Ahambran refugee camp on Valmer Two, he was the last of his kind alive. Drifting, perpetually lonely, with no registered birth, a gun for hire since he was young enough to hold one, Limun had avoided extinction, but he was smart enough to realise that enough people knew him, and eventually his existence would get back to the Holean secret service and they’d want to finish the job.

It was a shit situation no sane man would have gotten involved in. Too bad Derrick liked trouble and liked Limun even more. The kid hadn’t been part of the plan for either of them, but it had been another damn good incentive to get them out of the firing line faster. The morning he’d realised he was pregnant, Limun had almost lost it, throwing up in the sink of the dirty motel room, not for sickness but for nerves, and Derrick had stroked his back and told him he was responsible for repopulation now, anyway. Limun had socked him on the arm for that, but Derrick’s grin seemed to have calmed him down even when his shit jokes hadn’t.

By now, Limun protected the sprog as viciously as any animal their offspring. He’d gone underground to escape all notice, spending months crawling in the sewer system under a half-forgotten port on a colony at the ass end of the fourth galactic quadrant. They’d be able to go airborne here with the ship Derrick had acquired, more or less through legal means. 

“Did you make contact to Terra?”

“Yeah, I worked it out with the brass from when I was military. The humans are going to take us in and the Holeans aren’t going to start a war with the Federation over one guy.”

The Federation, made up of roughly a quarter of the known species in the Milky Way, was big on humanitarian efforts if they were convenient and no one could claim that a lone wolf like Limun was a necessary military target for the Holeans, especially since the political structure he could have served had been silently and completely exterminated over the last fifty years. However, as long as they were out here, Limun had a target on his back. The humans were willing to extend their generosity when Limun was behind their borders, but they weren’t going to risk a serious diplomatic incident over a mercenary and pushing troops into the gamma quadrant would have broken like sixteen different treaties with several interplanetary confederations and alliances.

“But how are we going to get away without the New League tagging our ship? They’ll want ID.”

The New League included the Holeans among many others. It was mostly ruled by the native Rin-ten out here, and while the Rin-ten didn’t fight the Holeans’ wars for them, anything that entered their administrative records would get back to the Holeans as quick as the databases updated cross-universe, meaning within seconds.

“Don’t worry. I told you, I worked these parts, or else I wouldn’t have stashed you here. There are still a couple of honest people at the space port who owe me a favour or two.”

“I’m going to trust your judgement on that.”

Derrick didn’t comment on the fact that Limun sounded doubtful. That he was willing to go along with his plan at all meant he had already put his own life and that of his child in Derrick’s hands.

_And I’m not going to fuck this up._

-

Derrick’s buddy Elisindra in security hadn’t lied: When their tiny speeder slipped up into the sky, the port did not hail them for any confirmations, so it seemed like their systems were conveniently bugging out thanks to a warning of their departure Derrick had sent over a secure channel, allowing Elisindra to run the code she’d written for the occasion.

“The patrols stationed out here have sensors that can detect us, but by then our drive core should have engaged. You working on that?”

“What does it look like?” Limun asked, twenty fingers flying over the ship’s dashboard simultaneously. “I’ve overclocked it. The ship will likely be smoking by the time we reach Terra, but it should make the jump. It’s still going to take a few minutes to charge, though.”

“Right.”

Derrick sat down next to Limun, staring out into the void of space before them. It was deceptively peaceful, sitting together in the tiny two-seater cockpit, so close their legs pressed together, everything around them quiet but for the hum of machines. In three minutes, they’d get pulled to their death by a tractor beam or they’d be on their way to a new life.

He looked over at Limun and found him staring back.

“What are we going to do on Terra?” Limun asked.

“Thought we could hire on with private security somewhere. Guard a few expensive buildings and people, glower at tourists.”

He grinned, masking that he meant it.

Limun snorted. “That might be interesting for a change, not expecting to get killed on the job every day,” he answered.

Derrick had half-expected Limun to laugh at him for the idea, and laugh harder when he heard that Derrick might actually like the idea of that sort of life. But both of them had spent a lot of time fighting and they weren’t twenty anymore.

“Yeah. Find an apartment somewhere that’s not full of vermin. Have a room for the kid,” Derrick said quietly.

At the edge of the main sensor screen, Derrick saw the new League patrol ships move, big and solid shapes like whales in an ocean. Limun saw them too, his hands tightening into fists.

“As long as the kid’s small, it’d be better not to be away too much,” he said, not quite managing to hide his fear.

The biggest ship came closer, much faster than they should have by Derrick’s calculations of their patrol routes. With a shiver running down his back, Derrick wondered how they hadn’t picked them up yet.

Limun’s hands were on the light speed controls, the end point of their journey in the Sol system already locked in, but the drive core was still booting up with a continuous whine.

“You know, we’ve spent enough time apart, too,” Derrick said because why not? There was little left to lose now and they were already fleeing space and going to raise a kid together, or maybe they weren’t going to do any of that and instead get put against the wall by Holean soldiers and executed with a neat shot to the head. “Not to mention I never got to show you off, with you on the wanted list since we’ve been together.”

“You think we can sleep in a bed every night without wanting to rip each other’s heads off after a month?” Limun asked, staring at the sensor.

“I believe we have it in us,” Derrick said. He didn’t have to think about it.

Limun took a deep breath.

“Me too.”

A light started blinking on their right. One of the patrol ships was hailing them. Derrick closed his eyes and opened the channel, since silent disobedience was the sure-fire way to get grabbed by the tractor beam here.

“Identify yourself,” the command came, tinny and without room for the blather Derrick had hoped to start to distract them at least for a little while.

“Sorry, our sensors got scrambled when we passed too close by a black hole. Who is hailing?” he gave back in his most jovial tone.

“New League. Identify yourself.”

“Go fuck yourself!” Limun snapped and before Derrick had time to get as much as a thought in, the ship lurched and suddenly time and space dilated around them as their vessel launched itself halfway through the galaxy.

Halting on the landing point, the ship rattled, metal screaming, and Derrick’s heart dislodged itself from his throat. Terra loomed through the front window, blue and green, covered in torn shreds of white clouds.

“Slowing down to standby for a bit, or we’re going to have system failure and burn up in Earth’s atmosphere,” Limun muttered.

“Well, that’d be an inglorious end to our escape.”

Derrick stared at Earth and then at Limun, who was holding his shaking hands in his lap. Victorious laughter broke free from Derrick’s chest without his permission. “We did it!”

Limun smiled rarely and when he did it exposed his fangs and looked hardly soothing. Derrick thought it was the sweetest sight right now. However, Limun did not leave him much time to admire it, as he crashed their mouths together in a kiss.

Derrick dragged him close, one arm around the back of Limun’s neck. The kiss was desperate, then slowed, a gentle press of lips and tongues, Limun fingering at his armour as if he wished to tear it off right there, then distracted, running his hands through Derrick’s hair, holding his face, holding him around the waist all at the same time. When they parted and then pressed their mouths together once more, and again and again, it was everything they hadn’t had time for in too fucking long.

His mouth wandered down Limun’s jaw and his neck and as he felt his pulse under his lips, he remembered that Limun had once told him that Ahambra would bite for marking when they meant a relationship, some feral instinct left over from a time before space travel, probably before they’d started living in houses. Derrick had never done it, telling himself that bruises in the shape of human teeth marks might attract comments that would give them away, but mostly because he was worried that Limun would tell him it wasn’t his place.

But Limun had come home with him with their baby in his belly. Derrick closed his teeth around his neck. Limun let out a sharp exhale, his arms tightening around him.

“Sorry, had to, it was too tempting,” Derrick said with a grin as he leaned back.

“Don’t worry. Human teeth are unimpressive – so blunt,” Limun said flatly, raising a brow.

Derrick jostled his shoulder.

“You want me to bite you again?”

“Yes,” Limun rumbled against his ear.

Derrick felt a bolt go through him at the tone.

“We do have thirty minutes to kill before we switch the motors on again.”

He dragged Limun out of the chair and into his arms where he belonged.


End file.
